powered by SignMyGuestbook.com
powered by SignMyGuestbook.com
Recent News... Just for Pope Gregory... |
2005-10-19 - 8:51 a.m. How many engineers does it take� Hey, Theo. How are you? Tired, I tell my senior engineer. Really? Why? I blink. You got my message Thursday night, right? He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. Yes. I had to take a walk around the building on that one. Good to know I can get people moving. Obviously, works kind of intense just this minute, so let me tell you a funny story from a month ago. I walk out of the building to hear a stream of profanity echoing across the parking lot. One of my colleagues is standing in front of his Pathfinder cursing. Are you okay? Did it hit you? He collects himself and says No, it�s just been a day and now the friggin� car won�t start and � But, hey, I have jumper cables and my truck is so conveniently parked right next to yours. Change viewpoints to my ace technician who walks out to see an analyst and a lead engineer using hardware cables. He knows, instinctively, engineers should not touch hardware and suddenly teleports himself into the picture, takes the cables from me and says, Here, I�ll hook those up for you. The analyst gratefully decides to watch from the sidelines where he joins the gathering crowd including my systems engineer who leads the assembled group in formulating theories of what failure could have caused the analyst�s car battery to die, and which ones have simple corrective actions and which failures mean he�s screwed. Meanwhile, the tech does what all techs do. He ignores the engineers continues working productively, coaching me in how he wants the hardware handled. I�d like you to step on the gas just a little, steady 2000-3000 rpm so we get a constant current flow over and charging. This is now drama, so the gathering crowd watches for the next few minutes only to find the battery will not hold a sufficient charges to start the beleagured Pathfinder. The crowd drifts away, except for the tech, the systems engineer and my mechanical engineer who has gone to fetch tools. The tech watches nervously, while pretending he�s not watching, as the engineers extract the car battery. Theo, the lead engineer, put the battery and analyst in her car, thanks the tech for his help, and tells the systems engineer we�re trying the simple solution of AutoZone first. In the denouement phase, a battery is acquired, the old battery tests as dead, the analysts frets about mechanical fit as the new battery is just slightly different in size than the old one. Theo ignores the fretting and opens the hood to hook up the new battery. Then, a crowd of engineers begins to gather around the perceived technical problem� � � � 
|